1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for inputting one or several value documents and an apparatus for accepting or processing value documents having such a device.
2. Related Art
Value documents are understood in this connection to be sheet-shaped objects that represent for example a monetary value or an authorization and hence should not be producible arbitrarily by unauthorized persons. Hence, the value documents have features that are not easily produced, in particular not easily copied, whose presence is an indication of authenticity, i.e. production by an authorized body. Important examples of such value documents are coupons, vouchers, checks and in particular bank notes. Moreover, the value documents can have added thereto so-called separation or header cards which can contain information about the value documents. Said information can relate to the number and total value of the value documents, but also information about a depositor of the value documents, such as his account number.
For accepting value documents there are increasingly used at least semi-automatically operating apparatuses, for example corresponding bank machines, payment terminals, etc. For automatic processing there are employed bank-note processing machines for checking and/or for sorting the value documents. In so doing, single or several value documents are supplied which the respective apparatus accepts and processes further. For example, the value document can be drawn into a housing of the apparatus, transported past at least one sensor and thereby checked by the latter as to type or value and authenticity and, upon recognition of authenticity according to a specified criterion, transported into a storage device and stored there. The value given by the stored value document can then be credited to an account of the user or employed for paying an invoice amount. It is also possible that goods or a voucher or data are issued to the user after the deposit of a specified minimum amount, as is known for example from vending machines.
To be able to attain a reliable recognition of type and/or authenticity simply by means of the sensor, it can be advantageous that the value document is oriented in a specified fashion relative to the sensor. For example, there can be provided a lateral orientation by which a specified value-document edge extending parallel to the transport direction of the value document must be located in a specified narrow area of the sensor. When several value documents are input simultaneously, it must moreover be ensured that only one value document after the other is always grasped and transported past the sensor. The previously mentioned orientation is also important in the case of the input of several value documents. A good orientation of the value documents is also advantageous for transport and storage.